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Gabriel Campillo in the running for Adonis Stevenson on Sept. 27

Fighters Network
04
Aug

Former titleholder Gabriel Campillo is among five boxers being considered for a Sept. 27 shot at RING and WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson at Bell Center in Montreal, Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel told RingTV.com on Monday.

A southpaw who turns 37 in September, Stevenson (24-1, 20 knockouts) signed with powerful advisor Al Haymon in February. Stevenson then left HBO in favor of a deal with Showtime in March after contending that HBO failed to renegotiate an agreement for him.

Stevenson’s move spawned a lawsuit in April by Main Events, the promoter of WBO counterpart Sergey Kovalev (25-0-1, 23 KOs). Main Events’ suit charged Haymon, Michel, Showtime and Golden Boy with interfering with a tentative fight between Stevenson and Kovalev that had been targeted for September in favor of one between Stevenson and IBF and WBA titleholder Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs).

But on Monday, Main Events dropped its suit in the wake of having reached a deal with Golden Boy on Friday evening for Hopkins to fight Kovalev on Nov. 8 on HBO at either Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City or Barclays Center in Brooklyn.



That left Stevenson searching for a significant opponent.

“I am looking into fights for Stevenson. I have contacted several promoters about their fighters. At this point, I have five opponents that we’re looking at,” said Michel, acknowledging that Campillo is among the candidates being sought for Stevenson.

“We’re going to discuss with the team which option is the best one, and then, we will decide what we’re going to do. We’re looking at the end of September. Sept. 27. As for [the lawsuit,] it is premature to comment on that. But we will have a meeting about that. So we are weighing our options and I will be able to offer further comments tomorrow.”

Stevenson went 4-0 over the course of 2013 with knockouts of Darnell Boone, Chad Dawson, Tavoris Cloud and Tony Bellew. Stevenson’s victories over Dawson, Cloud and Bellew were all televised by HBO, however, he did not have an exclusive deal with the network.

In his last fight, televised on Showtime in May, Stevenson scored knockdowns in the first and fifth rounds and rose from the canvas himself in the ninth of a unanimous decision over Andrzej Fonfara at Bell Centre in Montreal.

Stevenson was 13-1 with 13 knockouts in his previous 14 fights going into the bout with Fonfara, and had stopped 10 consecutive opponents since being knocked out by Darnell Boone in April 2010.

A 35-year-old southpaw, Campillo (24-6-1, 11 KOs) had lost three of his past five fights before stopping previously unbeaten Thomas Williams Jr. (17-1, 12 KOs) in the fifth round on Friday night.

Campillo’s losses during that time had been comprised of falling by disputed split-decision to then-titleholder Cloud, and by stoppage in the third and ninth rounds against Kovalev and Fonfara.

Campillo rebounded from the loss to Fonfara with a seventh-round knockout of Ricky Dennis Pow in previous fight in May before defeating Williams. Against Cloud, Campillo rose from two first-round knockdowns in a fight many believed that Campillo truly deserved to win.

Campillo won the WBA’s belt by majority decision over Hugo Hernan Garay in September 2009 and defended it once with a majority decision over Beibut Shumenov in August of that year. But Campillo was dethroned following a split-decision loss to Shumenov in January 2010.

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